New Directions in Home Furnishings
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 6 , 2 0 0 9 PAGE 1 3 A visitor views an installation for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Models as Muse exhibit. PHOTO: REUTERS Heidi Klum arrives for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Gala on Monday in New York. PHOTO: REUTERS They have style, they have grace, Christy Turlington gave good face. Naomi, Linda and Twiggy, too. ‘The Model as Muse’ aims to give credit to the women who helped set the standard of Western feminine beauty BY GUY TREBAY YORK NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW nominated her the “Face of 1967.” There is Vera von or else look at or look like or learn about one (check the Lehndorff, or Veruschka, the double-jointed German who gave way to the glamourpuss supermodels (Christy hat would Dovima With Elephants Google hits for Gisele Bundchen). And it almost goes aristocrat with slightly rubbery features, an Amazonian Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista) of the have been without Dovima?” the without saying that a reason for all this interest is that physique and a quirky intelligence that made her an ideal 1980s. And, with the notable exceptions of Kate Moss curator Kohle Yohannan said last these gorgeous and petted and idealized creatures are photographer’s foil. and Gisele Bundchen, that is pretty much where the week, referring to a celebrated passive — their beauty that of a butterfly pinned to a There is Penelope Tree, the society girl with the high occupational and cultural needle got stuck. collector’s tray. Richard Avedon photograph of seeks to examine the relationship, as forehead of a Memling Madonna and eyes so wide-set The Model as Muse Still, models’ images “tell the story of entire generations she looks like a Martian bug. There is Peggy Moffitt, the “W1955 that depicted the attenuated mannequin Dovima (nee Yohannan writes in the big glossy book that accompanies of women,” or one aspect of it, anyway, claimed Yohannan, Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba) wearing a Christian Dior model whose impassive face and stylized posture added the exhibition, “between high fashion and the evolving ideals who shared curatorial duties with Harold Koda, the curator a compelling Kabuki element to her collaborations with sheath and sandwiched between monumental pachyderms. of beauty through the careers and personifications of iconic in charge of the Costume Institute. He cited the example of One could just as easily ask what Dovima With provocateur designers like Rudi Gernreich (she modeled models who posed in the salons, walked the runways and and the 1920s model Marian Morehouse, whose lean physique Elephants would have been without the elephants, of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar his famous Topless bathing suit in 1964). There is the exploded onto the pages of and sleek modernist beauty marked a dramatic shift away haughtily aristocratic Donyale Luna — born Peggy Anne course, but then 3-tonne pachyderms don’t rate the and Time.” even Life from the simpering and corseted beauties of the Belle Freeman in Detroit — an early African-American model cultural attention devoted to beautiful clothes-hangers Action verbs are one of the enduring tropisms of Epoque to a newly liberated and unfettered type. who weigh 50kg. whose phenomenally long limbs and ethereal aura made fashion-speak and so naturally models never “land” “In a nutshell, the show is about expanding the way her an ideal vehicle for the futuristic creations of design Elephants don’t have fanzines, magazines, Web sites in either Vogue or our lives with a passive thump. we see a fashion photograph to include the model,” and blogs devoted to their images and antics. They don’t innovators like Paco Rabanne. Models are locomotives, to use an archaic Vreeland-era Yohannan said. Are models perhaps the last silent film stars? A preview attract the thumb-tapping haiku artists of the Twitter- sustains this formulation. Models rocket. Models explode. Whether Whether or not The Model as Muse of The Model as Muse suggests they are. A model’s face sphere. They do not rate museum shows consecrated or not models are icons, they incontestably excite our notion, it does provide a guilt-free opportunity to revisit to their essentially unsung contributions to fashion, art, on a magazine cover may sell fewer issues than that of attention and draw us in. fashion’s back pages (literally; many of the images in the latest hot actress, but they are ultimately a lot more feminism, commerce, body imagery and art. In truth, “I was a little Southern, ignorant white female and the show exist only as tear sheets from magazines). The models have never garnered the full-scale museum compelling to look at and this is because we hardly ever would have been one forever,” Lauren Hutton once told crowds likely to throng this show may include some have to hear about their private lives or be burdened with treatment, either. Or they didn’t until now. me, had modeling not propelled the Carolina tomboy from of the kooks who carve out spooky cultist Web-caves Opening at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Vogue covers their thoughts. aims to give her simple beginnings and onto a string of devoted to favorites (one such site features 15,000 It cannot be accidental that Kate Moss, the most Museum of Art today, The Model as Muse and lucrative advertising campaigns. images), but also anyone looking to become reacquainted persuasive contemporary example of a model as an artistic credit to the assorted women who, at least since the Now in her 60s and still working, Hutton is among with a face from the past. invention of photography, have helped set the standard catalyst, has assiduously guarded what she says throughout the few models to have improvised a durable career in a And what faces they had, and what surprising kinds her career. Moss is no dummy. She knows that the basic of Western feminine beauty. The sophisticates (Dovima, business where the talent is often considered a necessary of beauty. True, there are the symmetrically formed Lisa Fonssagrives, Sunny Harnett) of the 1950s, with requirement of her particular job is silence. A model is a nuisance and in which it is commonplace for people to goddesses like Suzy Parker or Jean Shrimpton or muse to the precise extent that a model is mute. their distant gazes and angular figures, became the hippie talk about a model’s “use by” date. Rene Russo. But there are also plenty of oddballs like goddesses (Veruschka, Penelope Tree, Twiggy) of the “Modeling is a heinous job,” said Yohannan last week Twiggy, whose gangly limbs and freckled androgyny 1960s. And they in turn were transformed into the Life magazine gushingly types of the following and, having been a model himself, the curator should know. seem as startling now as when ruddy athletic Yet an awful lot of people seem to want to be a model decade (Lisa Taylor, Patty Hansen), Established & Sons Buggs lamp by Sebastian Wrong. PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE New directions in home furnishings BY ALICE RAWSTHORN NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, MILAN espite the economic gloom, Milan seemed Utilitarianism, innovation and a retreat from opulence surfacedwere inmajor Milan last themes year. This attook this the form year’s Milan furniture fair as frenzied as ever during the furniture of sparse compositions of angular shapes made D fair here late last month. Hotels were full, shaped pieces of a recycled composite material. from rough materials in boldly contrasting colors even at vertiginous rates, cabs scarce (empty weathered recessions before. Some also have the Several manufacturers responded to the and reflected the influence of Grcic and the ones, at least) and roads choked with traffic. advantage of being privately owned, and therefore crisis with things that they hope people will care Dutch conceptualist Jurgen Bey. There were hundreds of parties, including one free from the scrutiny of external investors. about and use for longer, because they were so Those qualities were visible in the work of every night at the flagship store of Skitsch, a new “Family ownership is a great strength, espe- thoughtfully designed and made. Nacho Carbonell, Peter Marigold and Raw Edges Italian furniture company. cially at a difficult time like this,” observed Rolf This was the theme of a quietly elegant in Design Miami’s “Craft Punk” installation, as Behind the bravado, some manufacturers cut Fehlbaum, chairman of Vitra, the Swiss furniture exhibition by the Dutch school Design Academy well as in Maarten Baas’ roughly hewn wooden costs by introducing fewer products than usual, group founded by his father in 1950. “You need Eindhoven, which showed products intended to Standard Unique chairs for Established & Sons and designers swapped sob stories of canceled that passion, commitment and craziness.” encourage the enjoyment of the rituals of daily and the circular tables that Martino Gamper projects and dwindling royalties. The number Yet the economic storm has also aggravated life, like a series of liquid and solid soaps meant made from salvaged chunks of laminated hotel 360°chair, desk and storage unit designed of people visiting the Salone del Mobile, which the European manufacturers’ longer-term to make washing more engaging. (The exhibition cabinets, originally designed by Gio Ponti in 1960, by Konstantin Grcic for Magis. ran from April 22 to April 27 in the labyrinthine problems of fierce competition from China, and was the debut of Alexander van Slobbe, for the gallery Nilufar. PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE Rho-Pero complex, fell from last year’s their own failure to meet consumers’ demands the Dutch fashion designer, as Eindhoven’s Whatever happens to the economy, the record of 348,452 to 304,702, according to the for sustainable products.